From the time she set foot on US soil, Ingrid Bergman became one of Hollywood’s most successful and sought after actresses of all time.
Her luminous beauty, intriguing accent, effortless naturalism, and discerning choices in her roles made her one of the first modern female American actresses of the silver screen. Bergman could convincingly play a [...]

Over the past year, the world has witnessed catastrophic acts, entrenched conflict and scandalized morality among those proclaiming to represent the Islamic, Judaic and Christian faiths. To more than 6% of the world’s population who practice Buddhism, these acts are symptomatic of suffering that humans can choose to transcend. In the first [...]

No baseball strike. Reaction and analysis from “Only a Game’s” Bill Littlefield.
Guests:
Bill Littlefield, Host of NPR’s “Only a Game”

We’ve all felt it, more than we’re likely to admit, but most of us didn’t know it had a name… Schadenfreude (SHAH-den-froi-duh), the delighting in other’s misfortunes is that feeling you get when the person you don’t like slips on a banana peel or that CEO you’ve envied faces jail-time. With big shots [...]

It started as a code for French prisoners, developed into a language of France’s immigrant periphery and today has infiltrated the country’s youth and pop culture. Verlan is a popular slang in which standard French spellings or syllables have been reversed, recombined or both (Jourbon is Verlan for Bonjour). The Verlan phenomenon has become [...]

Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld made it clear he doesn’t thinks America needs support from allies to act on Iraq. He even quoted Churchill to make the point. But what would going it alone mean? And what would it mean for America’s relationship with Britain?
Prime Minister Blair has been America’s staunchest ally in the war [...]

Yesterday President Bush hosted Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. As talk of war in Iraq gains momentum, US-Saudi relations grow more tenuous.
Guests:
Gregory Gause, Director of Middle East Studies at the University of Vermont

The economy is in the doldrums, and labor unions and their members are feeling the pinch. Major unions across the nation are threatening to strike; machinists at United Airlines, longshoremen on the West Coast, hotel and restaurant workers in Chicago. Any of these strikes could have a significant impact on the economy, but unionized [...]

Pepe Mogt grew up just minutes south of San Diego in Tijuana, where the commerce and cultures of Mexico and the United States meet. In this radio diary, he explains how his and other Tijuana DJ’s have merged traditional Norteno music with techno and started a cultural phenomenon called Nortec.
Guests:
Pepe Mogt

China’s ailing leader, 76-year-old Jiang Zemin, may soon step down. His potential replacement is China’s Vice President Hu Jintao. Succession doesn’t happen often in China, and the talk behind this transfer of power is creating a climate of intrigue in Beijing and beyond.
Lurking beneath the dramatic skylines of Shanghai and Beijing is a [...]

Since 9/11, the Justice Department has closed hundreds of deportation hearings for individuals targeted in the terrorism investigation. Yesterday, the United States 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that secrecy in these trials is unconstitutional.
“The Executive Branch seeks to uproot people’s lives outside the public eye and behind a closed door,” said Judge Damon [...]

The Danger of Making Martha Stewart the big story.
Guests:
Caryl Rivers, Professor of journalism at Boston University

Lawyers for Martha Stewart delivered more than a thousand documents to Capitol Hill, as investigators continue to investigate the insider-trading scandal that’s dogged her all summer. Stewart herself may be called up to Capitol Hill. Congress and criminal investigations aren’t her only problem. Now she’s being accused of insider trading in stock of her [...]

Israel has lived in fear of Iraq for more than a decade.
During the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein launched 39 Scud missiles at Israel, and held back another 25 Scuds, fitted with germ warheads.
Today, experts say that if the U.S. goes ahead with an attack on Iraq, Saddam Hussein may not hold back his weapons against [...]

Guests:
Jon Hilsenrath, Economics reporter with The Wall Street Journal

No one was more influential in shaping and transforming the blues than Muddy Waters. Born McKinley Morganfield in the plantations of the Mississippi Delta, Waters brought the sounds of the south, north and provided the link between the deep Mississippi Delta blues and the hard-edged, urban and electric Chicago blues more than any other [...]

Military strikes in Iraq are months away but stock market analysts are girding for the inevitable. Could ousting Saddam Hussein mean a bullish market for investors?
Guests:
Roland Jones, Business Reporter for MSNBC.com

When the market bubble burst, so did hopes for a comfortable retirement for millions of Americans. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute says the country cannot invest its way out of the problem. This hour, a hard look at tough choices for meeting retirement needs.
Guests:
Christian Weller - Macro Economist at the Economic [...]

Guests:

Environmental optimism shone thorugh at the groundbreaking 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Delegates pledged to tackle difficult agenda items: climate change, pollution, and preserving biodiversity.
As 60,000 delegates and 100 world leaders head to Johannesburg for the upcoming Earth Summit…how much has actually changed? What have been the environmental successes and failures? [...]

Bill Clinton is not ready to slip quietly into America’s backdrop. Not yet. Since leaving office, the former president has assumed the mantles of AIDS spokesperson, New York everyman, and, maybe soon, syndicated afternoon talk show host.
It may be exactly the right role, for the man famous for perfecting the art of balancing [...]

Healthcare costs are skyrocketing. Insurers, drug companies, HMOs, and hospitals are all pointing fingers at who’s to blame. Meanwhile lawmakers in Washington have been deadlocked on healthcare for years. Healthcare will be at the top of the agenda in the November elections. But will it be all rhetoric and no action?
Political [...]

Martha Stewart delivered more than 1,000 pages of documents yesterday afternoon to the House Energy and Commerce committee investigating the sale of her ImClone Systems stock. She handed over the documents under threat of subpoena as Congress continues its insider trading inquiry.
Guests:
Tracie Rozhon - Business reporter with the New York Times

Since the corporate scandals of companies like Enron, Tyco and World Com, David Novak has been a busy man. A former white-collar criminal himself, Novak now works as a federal incarceration consultant. His book “Downtime: A Guide to Federal Incarceration” shares many of the truths, myths, do’s and don’ts of prison time. [...]

Middle income families have stood by and watched the ebbs and swells of the economic boom. The median income is on the rise, but so is household debt. Costs of childcare, healthcare, and housing have many families walking a narrow fence while budgeting tightly and saving lightly. There’s little cushion available if an unexpected [...]

School children memorize its preamble. The President swears to protect it. The Founding Fathers crafted it, giving birth to a new nation. Two hundred thirteen years later, the Constitution of the United States has ascended to the peak of American political consciousness. It is conceived of as a perfect democratic document, the [...]

President Bush is taking advantage of his time at his Crawford, Texas ranch to catch up on some reading. We’ll take a look at the president’s vacation reading list, and see if there might be a clue to his foreign policy plans.
Guests:
Dana Milbank, White House Correspondent for the Washington Post

Globalization represents international trade at its best. But in practice, globalization has failed the poor nations of the world, largely benefiting the powerful U.S. and European nations responsible for writing the rules governing the free-market economy.
Even in the U.S., the lion’s share of the profits go to big-business and the wealthy. Many Third World nations [...]

Last night, CNN aired the first installment of the “terror tapes” found in Afghanistan by reporter Nic Robinson. The 64 tapes are the first direct evidence of the full scope of al Qaeda’s training practices which included everything from making chemical weapons to shooting down aircraft.
Guests:
Jim Walsh, a fellow in the International Security Program [...]

Poised on the cliff of recession, hearing the preamble to war, George W. Bush and Herbert Hoover faced similar national and global circumstances early on in their presidencies. Recently, Bush has been compared with Hoover. Pundits sound a warning against economic depression. How simliar are Hoover and Bush? This hour, drawing proper [...]

As floodwaters recede in Prague and buildings buckle on ravaged foundations, Alfredo
Azula, managing editor at The Prague Post, describes watching his city sink in the worst flooding in over a century.
Guests:
Alfredo Azula, Managing Editor of The Prague Post

On Sunday, Bahrain, a key US ally, and Iran issued a joint statement opposing unilateral military action against Iraq. The tiny island nation houses the US Navy’s 5th fleet and was a key base for operations in Afghanistan. As resistance mounts, can the US afford to attack Iraq?
Guests:
Joshua Marshall, Frequent contributor to Washington [...]

As the Bush administration continues to weigh its options in Iraq, more and more Washington officials are questioning the call to war.
But Saddam Hussein was not always locked in America’s cross hairs. In the 1980s, Hussein was a partner to the US, when the US supported Hussein’s Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. But [...]

Alfred Azula, managing editor of The Prague Post shares his experience of watching his city virtually disappear under the flood waters.
Guests:

Jonathan Safran Foer made a splash this summer with his debut novel “Everything is Illuminated”. The book has been the talk of literarily circles due to its dual plots, its Russian-accented narrative and its experimental style of fiction writing. The author, himself is getting buzz as one of the first voices of the Y-generation. Tonight [...]

Leading Republicans have begun to break ranks with President Bush over the administration’s plans for war with Iraq. Prominent GOP figures such as Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Chuck Hagel are all voicing doubts and concerns over a premature Iraq war policy. David Shribman, Washington Bureau Chief for the Boston Globe, outlines the Republican [...]

Classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson says the attacks of September 11th stripped away America’s hypocritical veneer of the past, and forced Americans to take a long look at the world, the way it really is… not the way Americans wish it were.
The grim reality, according to Hanson, is that terrorists against America are [...]

Los Angeles Times reporter covering the banking industry talks about record-low mortgage rates and the impact on housing prices.
Guests:
Scott Reckard, banking reporter for The Los Angeles Times
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If you’re in the market to sell or buy, you know it’s a jungle out there. What nobody seems to know is how long the feeding frenzy’s going to last. What goes boom can also go bust. Soaring prices have fueled fears the bubble will burst.
With the economy on a shaky foundation and [...]

The 82-year-old John Paul II ventures home to Poland tomorrow. Any trip taken by the frail Pope is a magnet for the media, but this trip home is refueling rampant speculation that the Pope is on the verge of retirement.
Guests:
Father Thomas Reese, editor in chief of the Jesuit journal America.

They’re barred from the priesthood and most major decision making in the Catholic Church. But in the latest wave of crises in the Catholic Church, women are taking the lead in a new era of church reform.
Catholic women today are calling for major changes in the Church, from ordination of women to acceptance of [...]

This summer a number of first time novelists are enjoying great success… Jonathan Saffron Foer, Steven Carter and Alice Sebold to name a few.
Tonight we talk about who this new class of authors are, what they’re writing about and which of these premiere books are the buzz of the beach blankets.
Guests:
Carol Horn, Vice President and [...]

At five o’clock this evening, the CEOs and CFOs of more than 900 of America’s largest companies must file papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission that certify their companies’ financial statements.
But will making corporate executives swear by the numbers give a much needed boost to investor confidence in a sagging market?
Guests:
James Surowiecki, Economics columnist [...]

Today in Waco, Texas President Bush hosted the President’s Economic Forum at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The meeting brought together business and policy leaders to discuss ways to jumpstart the sluggish economy. Critics argue that it’s a public relations vehicle and that the guest list is heavily weighted toward the Bush-friendly South [...]

Reporter debrief on Colombia’s newly declared state of emergency. President Uribe announces new taxes to pay for soldiers, police and increased surveillance to fight leftist rebels.
Guests:
T. Christian Miller, reporter from the L.A. Times;

It’s been a solid, but stormy, alliance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia for more than 60 years. Oil and military interests have glued the U.S.-Saudi relationship intact, but what happens when the Saudis say no to miltary action in Iraq? The Bush team is divided on trusting the Saudis, and busily moving troops into [...]